The Knock

         A knock on my bedroom door pulls me from my sleep. I glance at my clock. The bright numbers tell me it's about quarter to four in the morning. A streetlight outside my window floods my room with a pale orange hue as a green light blinks on and off in a random pattern on some part of my computer. Raising up from my bed, my mind starts its slow thought process after being torn from a peaceful rest. My first thought is that my parents never interrupt me at night, so this must be important. As I reach for the door knob, I freeze in place -- my sister has been in the hospital for nearly a month now and I recall the phone ringing moments before I fell asleep. The thought of something unspeakable having happened causes my heart to leap to my throat, but I dismiss it from my mind, grasp the knob, and open the door.
         The light from the living room momentarily blinds me as I move to a sitting position on the edge of my bed. When my vision returns to normal I see my dad and step-mom standing in the doorway -- my heart returns to my throat. My mind is quickly woken up as a thousand questions race through it. The most prominent question is what news is important enough for my dad and step-mom to drive half way across town to my house at this time in the morning?
         "Oh John..." my stepmother whispers as she enters my room and sits on the edge of my bed with me. She wraps her arms around me and I can hear her sniffling. She holds me tight and says, almost silently, "I'm so sorry," and finally tells me the news, "Heather passed away."
         I stare straight ahead at the planets and stars that decorate my wall -- remnants from a simpler time. I wait for my mind to digest this information so it can choose a reaction for me. After a few very long minutes of sorting all the thoughts racing through my head, the realization strikes me that I'm feeling no reaction at all. Everyone always talks about the emotional steps you take when dealing with the death of a loved one, yet I'm not feeling anything. My worrying about my lack of emotions is interrupted as my step-mom asks me to pack a few clothes so I can go home with them. She leaves my room and closes my door.
         I slowly rise to my feet and turn on my light switch. I pick up my back pack from the side of my bed and unzip the main compartment. As I pull up the flap I see that it's already packed with clothes. I hadn't even had time to unpack since I came home from dad's last week with news that Heather would be home by the end of the week. I pull out a few of the crumpled clothes and replace them with a few neatly folded, freshly washed clothes. Zipping up the back pack I flip off the light, open the door, and step into the living room.
         My dad takes my back pack and I follow him and my step-mom out the front door. I walk carefully down the cement steps, holding onto the rusted metal railings along either side for balance. Dad opens the side door of the blue van and puts my bag inside as my step-mom opens the passenger door and enters the vehicle. I step into the opened side door, sit down on the middle bench seat, and fasten my seat belt around me. As I stare out the window at my small one story house, my dad closes the side door and walks around to the driver's side door, gets in, and starts the van.
         Slowly, we begin to move down the road. The streetlights keep their constant vigil, completely ignoring this vehicle which has broken the silence of the night. I continue to stare out the window, taking notice small details -- a raccoon climbs down from a tree to scavenge some food for its young, a small red sports car passes us at a reckless speed, and in the long string of streetlights, one has burned out.
         Taking a deep breath, I think of what was told to me. I say it in my mind to try to grasp it, to evoke some sort of feeling, "My sister is gone..." Nothing. I feel no sadness, no anger, not even confusion. Unable to bring on any emotion, I move on to asking myself questions. I think to myself "why," just as the van pulls to my dad's house.
         I undo my seat belt, open the door, and step out into the cold night air. Closing the door I begin to walk with my dad and step-mom to the side door. They open the door, walk in, and I follow. Taking off my shoes, I walk up to the two steps to the kitchen and sit down at the table under the glow of the overhead light. My stepsister, Andrea, is sitting on the floor in front of the sink with her knees to her chest drinking tea. My step-mom sits down on a chair beside me, my dad on a chair across from me, and Andrea takes the last chair in front of her mom. We sit there for a few minutes in silence, just letting everything sink in. On the table are three photographs, unmoved since I was here a few days ago. The first is a picture of Andrea on Heather's hospital bed, taken by Heather herself. The second was a picture of me in the chair beside her bed, again taken by Heather herself. Both of these picture were perfectly centered -- amazing for a six year old. "She'll make...she would've made a great photographer," I think to myself. The final picture is of Andrea, Heather, and I in her hospital room -- the last picture of the three of us together.
         "Would you like some coffee?" Mom breaks the silence. I move my head from side to side, almost unnoticeably. "Tea?" she asks -- same reply. "Anything?"
          "Water." I choke out my first word since the knock.
         Mom gets up and walks over to the sink. She opens the cupboard overhead and takes a glass from it. Turning to the tap, she puts the glass underneath, fills it up, and brings it to me. I reach for it with a shaky hand and bring the mouth of the glass to my lips. The clear liquid provides solace to my parched throat. As I set the glass back down, mom sits down on the chair and starts to tell me and Andrea what she knows so far.
         "Sharon called Scott at around midnight, and Heather was having complications so he rushed to the hospital. Heather started coughing up blood and it didn't stop. They worked on her for an hour, but couldn't bring her vital back up. They pronounced her dead at two am. Scott called me at around three and asked me to pick up John and bring him here," she told us while holding her cup of coffee.
         These were the first details I had heard, and they hit my like a ton of bricks, but still did not cause any emotions to surface. I took another long drink of water, and let what my step-mom had said to assist in my understanding of what happened. 'She was gone' was no longer so abstract because I knew some details leading up to her departure from this world. I raise my wrist up from underneath the table and look at my watch. It's nearly four-thirty.
         "Mike, get some sleep. You have work in the morning. I can stay home tomorrow, then we'll decide for the rest of the week what we'll do," my step-mom says to my sleep-weary dad. A quiet "mmhmm" is the only reply. Getting up and pushing his chair in, he stumbles tiredly off towards the washroom.
         "I'll call the school in the morning and tell them what happened and that you two probably won't be in until at least next Monday," my step-mom says turning towards Andrea and I. She gets up as well and pushes in her chair. "You two need your sleep too. John, I'll get you a pillow and you can sleep on the couch in the sitting room with the quilt instead of going downstairs and waking the boys," she says as she walks down the hall towards her room.
         Andrea and I both get up, push in our chairs, and put our glasses in the sink. Turning towards me she puts her arms around me and gives me a hug. "I'm so sorry," she whispers. After a few seconds she lets go and says "I'll call Ruth and Shaun in a couple hours before they leave for school and let them know."
         "Night," I say as I walk towards the sitting room -- my second word since the knock.
         As I walk into the sitting room I close the door part way behind me and lay down on the couch. I wrap myself in the white quilt and reach for the remote. I turn on the TV and flip through channels for a moment before finally choosing Gilligan's Island -- high quality TV for five in the morning.
         I watch the screen for a few minutes before my mind starts to drift back to this morning's event. My understanding was growing every minute, yet at the same time it wasn't growing at all. The more I thought, the more I understood the fact that she was gone and the she wasn't coming back. However, I hadn't even begun to grasp why it had happened, and knew very little about what or how it happened.
         Glancing back at the island setting shown on the TV, I'm reminded of Survivor and Heather's prediction that Colby would win it all. I laugh to myself and wonder if maybe she'll be right after all. Suddenly I realize an emotion has surfaced -- nostalgia. I spend some more time thinking, but fail to produce any other emotions.
         My concentration is broken by the sudden high pitched tone coming from the TV. I look up and see that the station has gone off the air. I reach for the remote and change the channel to the NewPL to watch the news -- a faint hope in my mind that the world has screeched to a halt because of Heather's death. However, nothing is sad, and time is marching on with or without my sister. I feel a bit of resentment towards the world but at the same time understand that it will never stop for one person.
         As I lay there trying to fall asleep, a thought and a memory occur to me that gives me comfort in feeling no strong emotion. The thought is that my religious beliefs tell me that Heather will be back someday, and that she can never truly be gone, and therefore I have no need for tears and sadness. The memory is something Mr. Kinczyk told us in an English class one day. When his father died he didn't cry when he got the news, didn't cry at the funeral, and hasn't cried since. I mull over this and understand that everyone has their own way of expressing their grief, and that I don't need to be overcome with sadness or any other emotion people claim I'm supposed to feel. With this final thought, my mind finally clears itself enough for me to drift off to sleep.